Date: Wednesday, 7 February 2018
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Dimitrios Tsomocos
Talk Title: ‘Global Imbalances and Greece’s Exit from the Crisis’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine’s College

The next St Catharine’s Political Economy Seminar in the series on the Economics of Austerity, will be held on 07 February, 2018 – Dimitrios Tsomocos will give a talk on “Global Imbalances and Greece’s Exit from the Crisis”. The seminar will be held in the Ramsden Room at St Catharine’s College from 6.00-7.30 pm. All are welcome. The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.

Speakers:
Graham Gudgin is currently Honorary Research Associate at the Centre For Business Research (CBR) in the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. He is also Chief Economic Advisor at Policy Exchange, London, visiting Professor at the University of Ulster and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Ulster University Economic Policy Centre. He was senior Economic Advisor at Oxford Economics from 2007 to 2015 and was director of the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre from 1985 to 1998 when he became Special Adviser to the First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly until 2002. Prior to this he was economics fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge and a member of the Cambridge Economic Policy Group under Wynne Godley. He is the author of a large number of books, reports and journal articles on regional economic growth in the UK, the growth of small firms and electoral systems. He is currently working with Ken Coutts on a macro-economic model and forecasts for the UK economy and on the economic impact of Brexit.
Ken Coutts is Honorary Research Associate at the Centre For Business Research (CBR) in the Judge Business School , Emeritus Assistant Director of Studies in the Faculty of Economics, and Life Fellow in Economics, Selwyn College, at the University of Cambridge. A member of the Cambridge Economic Policy Group in his younger career, led by the late Wynne Godley, his main interests are in macroeconomics, monetary and fiscal policy, trade, capital flows and balance of payments. He has published widely in these areas. He has also written extensively on the pricing behaviour of manufacturing industries in the UK and Australia. He is currently working with Graham Gudgin a macro-economic model and forecasts for the UK economy and on the economic impact of Brexit.

Talk Overview:
The global capital imbalances constituted a primary factor for the Eurozone debt crisis and amplified the divergence between the core countries and the periphery. For the case of Greece there exist three ‘alternative’ mainstream explanations of the crisis and the subsequent recession: The Greek (political and institutional inefficiency), the European (institutional incompetence and extended corruption) and the I.M.F. (debt overhang, necessity of “hard” budget constraints, public investments and expansionary monetary policy). The two academic strands that dominate the debate are the one of the importance of debt overhung and rational expectations and the one of heterogeneous general equilibrium models. We argue that the exit from the crisis warrants:
1. Debt restructuring and nationalisation of N.P.L.s
2. Reduction of public sector profligacy and institutional efficiency
3. Public investments and investments for internationally traded goods
4. Tax relief (corporate and property taxation); 5. Re-stabilisation of market expectations and creditworthiness.

Please contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Michael Kitson (mk24@cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.